All posts by Archaeology World Team

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Scythian Grave Unearthed in Southern Siberia

Scythian Grave Unearthed in Southern Siberia

A 2,500-year-old grave has been discovered in Siberia by archaeologists, with the remains of four people of ancient Tagar culture — two guerrillas including two warriors, a male and female  — and a stash of their metal weaponry.

Scythian Grave Unearthed in Southern Siberia
A man, two women and an infant were buried in this grave about 2,500 years ago in what is now Siberia.

The early Iron Age burial contained the skeletal remains of a Tagarian man, woman, infant, and older woman, as well as a slew of weapons and artifacts, including bronze daggers, knives, axes, bronze mirrors, and a miniature comb made from an animal horn, according to the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

The Tagar culture, a part of the Scythian civilization (nomadic warriors who lived in what is now southern Siberia), often buried its dead with miniature versions of real-life objects, likely to symbolize possessions they thought were needed in the afterlife. In this case, however, the deceased was laid to rest with full-size objects, the archaeologists said. 

It’s not yet clear how these individuals died, but perhaps an illness caused their deaths, the archaeologists said.

A team from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography found the burial in the southern part of Khakassia, a region in Siberia, ahead of construction work on a railroad.

The finding is remarkable, given that grave robbers have looted most known Tagarian graves, Yuri Vitalievich Teterin, head of the excavation, said in a statement. (Of note, this culture is different than the fictional “Targaryen” dynasty from the TV drama “Game of Thrones.”)

The remains of the man and woman, who likely died in their 30s or 40s, were laid down on their backs, with large ceramic vessels next to each of them. The man also had two sets of weapons (two bronze daggers and two axes), and the woman had one set, according to the statement.

The woman’s weapons, including a long-handled instrument, perhaps a hatchet or battle ax, were an unusual find; the Tagarians often buried their women with weapons, but those were usually long-range weapons, such as arrowheads, noted Oleg Andreevich Mitko, a leader of the excavation and head of archaeology at Novosibirsk State University in Russia. 

Some of metal grave goods found in the group burial.

The infant’s remains were in bad shape, the archaeologists found.

An aerial view of the burial mount at the foot of Mount Aar-tag.

“The remains of a newborn baby, no more than a month old, were also found in the burial, but fragments of its skeleton were scattered throughout the grave, possibly as a result of the activity of rodents,” Olga Batanina, an anthropologist at the Paleodata laboratory of natural scientific methods in archeology, said in the statement. 

At the man and woman’s feet, lay the remains of an older woman of about 60 years of age; her body was positioned on her right side, with her knees bent. Next to her, archaeologists found a small ceramic vessel and a comb with broken teeth. 

It’s unclear how these people were related to one another, but a forthcoming DNA analysis may reveal whether they had family ties. 

The Tagar culture lasted for about 500 years, from about the eighth to the third centuries B.C.; its people were spread across the Minusinsk Basin, a landscape that is a mix of the steppe, forest-steppe, and foothills, according to the statement. 

The archaeologists have a busy schedule ahead of them. Survey work in 2019 revealed more than 10 archaeological sites, nine of which were directly in the railroad’s development zone. This excavation is just one of those sites. 

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

The shockingly unspoiled Peruvian tomb of the Lord of Sipan, Mochican Warrior Priest

The shockingly unspoiled Peruvian tomb of the Lord of Sipan, Mochican Warrior Priest


In 1987, at an archaeological site in Huaca Rajada near Sipán, on the north coast of Peru, an immense complex of unplundered Moche cultural tombs was uncovered. The most famous tombs were held by the Lord de Sipán, a Mochican warrior priest who, as in the area before, was buried amid the sparkling jewels.

Before discovering the famous Moche leader, archaeologists were met by a Guardian – the remains of a man with a copper helmet and a shield. He was buried in a seated position and his feet amputated to prevent him from leaving his seat. At the time, the researchers had no idea of the opulent riches that lay beyond the Guardian.

Eventually, excavators came upon a tomb, a 5m x 5m chamber, still sealed, with a wooden sarcophagus in the centre – the first of its type to be reported in the Americas. Within the coffin, lay the remains of a man dressed in full royal regalia, surrounded by a plethora of dedicatory offerings that were to accompany him in his afterlife.

An analysis of his regalia and iconographic depictions found in his tomb, suggests that this man was a high ranking Moche warrior-priest and a pre-eminent ruler of the Lambayeque valley. This mighty noble, who was probably viewed by his people as having god-like powers, became known as the Lord of Sipán.

The Lord of Sipán was aged 35-45 years old at the time of his death, and is known to have ruled the Lambayeque Valley in the late 3 rd century AD.

The elite leader was found adorned in gold, silver, and copper jewellery and ornaments, including an enormous crescent headdress with a plume of feathers, a face mask, several pectorals composed of hundreds of shell beads, necklaces, nose rings, ear rings, a gold and silver sceptre, banners of gilded metal sewn onto cotton cloth, and two backflaps, which are trapezoidal sheets of beaten gold that warriors wore attached to the back of their costumes.

The necklaces were made with beads of gold and silver in the shape of maní (peanuts), an important food staple for the Moche. There were ten kernels on the right side made of gold, signifying masculinity and the sun god, and ten kernels on the left side made of silver, to represent femininity and the moon god.

Also buried with the Lord of Sipán were many ceremonial utensils such as tropical sea shells, silver and gold rattles, knives, golden death-masks, gold bells showing a deity severing human heads, three other headdresses, and hundreds of beads. A total of 451 gold, silver, copper, textile, and feather objects were buried with the Lord of Sipán to accompany him in the afterlife.

As excavations progressed, archaeologists soon discovered that the Lord of Sipán was not alone. Buried with the warrior priest were six other people: three young women dressed in ceremonial clothes placed at the head and foot of his coffin (possibly wives or concubines who had apparently died sometime earlier), two robust males with amputated feet on the long sides (possibly warriors who were sacrificed to accompany their lord), and a child of about nine or ten years of age, placed at the head of his coffin.

The remains of a third male was later found on the roof of the burial chamber sitting in a niche overlooking the chamber. There was also a dog, which may have been the Lord of Sipan’s favorite pet, and two llamas, which were probably offerings.

The following year, in 1988, a second tomb was found and excavated near that of the Lord of Sipán, which contained an individual whom archaeologists concluded was also a Moche priest, second only in status to the Lord himself, surrounded by a Guardian and two women.

He was buried with numerous ritualistic objects, including a cup or bowl for collecting the blood of sacrificial victims, a metal crown adorned with an owl with its wings extended, and other items associated with worship of the moon. Around his neck he wore a made from small golden pendants with human faces that strike a variety of expressions.

Discoveries continued to emerge. Buried beneath 16 layers of the finest ornaments and clothing, archaeologists found a third tomb, which was slightly older than the other two.

The golden treasures and ornaments accompanying the deceased revealed that this individual was of the same or similar rank as the Lord of Sipán, and DNA analysis has shown that the two were related.  As a result, the archaeologists named this third individual ‘The Old Lord of Sipán’.

The Old Lord was accompanied by a young woman and a Guardian and, while his tomb was more subdued than that belonging to the Lord of Sipán, it contained the finest metalwork found at the site, including many pieces made of thin, hammered plates of gold, and gilded copper and alloys.  The ability to do this type of gold alloying was not discovered in Europe until centuries later.

Among the most precious relics were a tiny gold figurine holding a shield and club, wearing a turquoise inlaid shirt, an owl headdress, and moveable nose ornament, and a finely crafted necklace made up of golden spiders.

By 2007, a total of fourteen elite tombs had been found at Huaca Rajada and it seems quite clear that many more are still waiting to be found.

The goods found within them are so extensive that a large museum has been constructed which is entirely dedicated to highlighting this incredible discovery that sheds light on the culture, religion, and technology of the Moche civilization. The Royal Tombs Museum of Sipán was constructed in nearby Lambayeque to hold most of the artifacts and interpret the tombs.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site

Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site

Builders stopped the backhoe during massive reconstruction efforts at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan when they uncovered something surprising just south of where the Twin Towers once stood.

At a depth of 22 metres (6.7 metres) below the current level on the street, in a pit that would become an underground security and parking complex, excavators found the mangled skeleton of a long-forgotten wooden ship.

A recent study found that the ship was actually constructed in 1773 or shortly after, on a small shipyard near Philadelphia, in the tree rings in those waterlogged shores. Moreover, the ship is made of the same type of white oaks used to construct parts of Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed, according to the study published in the journal Tree-Ring Research.

The entire ship was scanned before its removal to create a precise record of where each of its pieces were originally found
Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site
Four years after a shipwreck was revealed at Ground Zero, a new report details how tree rings helped establish the origins of the wooden vessel.

Archaeologists had been on-site throughout the excavation of the World Trade Center’s Vehicular Security Center. They had found animal bones, ceramic dishes, bottles and dozens of shoes, but the excitement really kicked up when the 32-foot-long (9.75 m) partial hull of the ship emerged from the dirt.

The vessel was quickly excavated, to prevent damage from exposure to the air. Piece by piece, the delicate oak fragments were documented and taken out of the rotten-smelling mud.

The timbers were sent to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, where they would be soaked in water to keep the wood from cracking and warping.

A few timbers were sent back to New York, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the World Trade Center, to the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. Researchers at the lab dried the fragments slowly in a cold room and cut thick slices of the wood to get a clear look at the tree rings.

A button found aboard the ship(left) , from the coat of a private in the British Army 52nd Regiment of Foot, which battled the American rebels. On the right the rings can be clearly seen in one of the beams

The team established that the trees used to build the ship — some of which had lived to be more than 100 years old — were mostly cut down around 1773. Then, to determine where the wood came from, the researchers had to find a match between the ring pattern in the timbers and a ring pattern in live trees and archaeological samples from a specific region.

“What makes the tree-ring patterns in a certain region look very similar, in general, is climate,” said the leader of the new study, Dario Martin-Benito, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.

Regional ring patterns arise from local rain levels and temperatures, with wetter periods producing thicker rings and drier periods producing smaller rings, he said.

Martin-Benito and his colleagues at Columbia’s Tree Ring Lab narrowed their search to trees in the eastern United States, thanks to the keel of the ship, which contained hickory, a tree found only in eastern North America and eastern Asia. Otherwise, the researchers would have had much more difficulty in limiting their search, as oak is found all over the world. 

The ship’s signature pattern most closely matched with the rings found in old living trees and historic wood samples from the Philadelphia area, including a sample taken during an earlier study from Independence Hall, which was built between 1732 and 1756.

“We could see that at that time in Philadelphia, there were still a lot of old-growth forests, and [they were] being logged for shipbuilding and building Independence Hall,” Martin-Benito told Live Science.

“Philadelphia was one of the most — if not the most — important shipbuilding cities in the U.S. at the time. And they had plenty of wood so it made lots of sense that the wood could come from there.”

Historians still aren’t certain whether the ship sank accidently or if it was purposely submerged to become part of a landfill used to bulk up Lower Manhattan’s coastline. Oysters found fixed to the ship’s hull suggest it at least languished in the water for some time before being buried by layers of trash and dirt.

Previous investigations found that the vessel’s timbers had been damaged by burrowing holes of Lyrodus pedicellatus, a type of “shipworm” typically found in high-salinity, warm waters — a sign that the ship, at some point in its life, made a trip to the Caribbean, perhaps on a trading voyage. Martin-Benito speculated that the infestation might have been one of the reasons the ship met its demise just 20 or 30 years after it was built.

“I don’t know much about the life expectancy for boats, but that doesn’t seem like too long for something that would take so long to build,” Martin-Benito said.

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Viking-Era Child’s Remains Discovered in Dublin

Viking-Era Child’s Remains Discovered in Dublin

RTÉ reports that the remains of a child and an iron buckle or fastener were uncovered in Dubh Linn, a dark tidal pool where the River Poddle enters the River Liffey at the site of Dublin Castle, by a team of researchers led by Alan Hayden of University College Dublin.

The find was made during an excavation near Dublin Castle where in ancient times the River Poddle flowed into the Dubh Linn near the River Liffey.

The skeleton, which was largely intact, was found just at the point before the river entered the pool and is thought to date from the 9th or 10th century.

The skeleton is believed to be that of a 10 to 12-year-old boy

After it was excavated it was discovered to be that of a child aged between 10 and 12 years of age – most likely a boy – and is thought to have been wrapped in a shroud before being thrown into the river.

The body was found with shoulders hunched together and an iron buckle or fastener was found with the body.

Alan Hayden from the UCD School of Archaeology who was leading the dig said the fact that it was not given a proper burial and was dumped in this manner could suggest an act of violence.

Further tests will be carried out to determine the date of death, gender and the ethnic origin of the person.

The dig, which is being carried out on the site of office development on Ship Street beside Dublin Castle, has already discovered that the original Dubh Linn was much larger than originally thought, extending beyond the walls of Dublin Castle.

Now the dig has found that the size of the original Viking settlement or Longphort can be shown to be double the extent previously established.

The archaeologists uncovered banks that would have run along the Poddle and the Dubh Linn with gaps to bring in boats. Inland there would have been a high fortification.

The area of the Longphort in the 10th and 11th centuries would have extended from the present-day Molly Malone statue on Suffolk Street to St Patrick’s Cathedral.

The dig has also established that Vikings continued living at the Dubh Linn even after the more famous Wood Quay settlement was established a kilometre away.

The Poddle was culverted in the 12th century and covered over completed in the 18th century. A 19th century well was found on the site.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Neolithic Settlement Discovered Near Turkey’s Black Sea Coast

Neolithic Settlement Discovered Near Turkey’s Black Sea Coast

Hurriyet Daily News reports that a team of researchers led by Nurperi Ayengin of Düzce University are excavating a pre-pottery Neolithic settlement at Kahin Tepe, which is located on northern Turkey’s Black Sea coast.

“We think that this is a sacred area where people came at certain times of the year to hunt, share their knowledge, worship, and make statues of animals,” Ayengin said.

Having started in 2018, the excavations have been going on ever since by the Kastamonu Museum Directorate and consulted by the Düzce University head of the Protohistoric and Near Eastern Archaeology Department, Nurperi Ayengin.

Nineteen students and academics from various universities are working in the excavation field.

Speaking to the Anadolu Agency, Ayengin said that they started the excavations in the region two years ago for a dam rescue project near Başköy village.

Pointing out that Kahin Tepe is located in a strategic location, Ayengin said, “We discovered the settlement dating to the Aceramic Neolithic period, which lasted between 12,000 and 7,000 BC.”

“One of the most famous of this period is Göbeklitepe located in the southeast. When we look at the social structure of the period, we know that the main element was a rigid and complex religious belief,” Ayengin noted.

She stated that new discoveries that would change the history of Anatolia were expected at Kahin Tepe.

“These excavations will yield very serious results in terms of both Anatolia and world history. In the qualified sculptures unearthed in the excavations, we can say that we have determined, which animals the gods of the Aceramic Neolithic period consisted of,” Ayengin added.

“We think that this is a sacred area where people came at certain times of the year to hunt, share their knowledge, worship, and make statues of animals,” she said.

Noting that both the region and the artefacts unearthed in the excavations are very similar to the characteristics of Göbeklitepe, Ayengin said that the city was one of the settlements with the most similar details to Göbeklitepe, especially when looking at the hybrid works and the depictions of the clergy.

“Kahin Tepe is the oldest temple site of the Aceramic Neolithic period in the Black Sea. This is a religious place where people both worship and transfer their knowledge. It is the oldest place of worship found in the Black Sea,” she said.

“We have seen that Anatolian history is pregnant with many unexplored settlements. Much bigger discoveries await us,” she noted, adding that this game-changer excavation will continue to change history.

Last year, the excavations in the region have unearthed findings such as a grinding stone and ornaments belonging to the same period.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

500-Year-Old Mummy of an Incan man wearing a feather headdress found near Lima, Peru

500-Year-Old Mummy of an Incan man wearing a feather headdress found near Lima, Peru

Thousands of Inca mummies, some of them bundled together in groups of up to seven, have been unearthed from an ancient cemetery under a shantytown near Lima in Peru.

Believed to be the largest cemetery from one time period excavated in Peru, lead archeologist Guillermo Cock said as many as 10,000 Incas were possibly buried at the site at Puruchuco in Peru’s Rimac Valley between 1480 and 1535.

But Cock, a Peruvian archeologist, said the site was being destroyed at an alarming rate by humans, including the release of thousands of gallons of sewage daily into the shantytown’s streets that had seeped underground and damaged some mummies.

“The consequences of humanity on these burials are terrible,” said Cock, adding that some of the mummies were riddled with worms. “It was not a pretty sight.”

Cock, who estimates they uncovered the remains of between 2,200 and 2,400 Incas, said the cemetery provided a huge scientific sampling of the Inca people from infants to the elderly and from the rich to the very poor.

“We have what in sociological terms, we would call the perfect sample to project presidential elections. Each social class and group and age is proportionally represented,” Cock told a news conference at National Geographic’s Washington headquarters.

“This will give us a unique opportunity to look into the Inca community, study their lives, their health and their culture,” added Cock, who has been doing archeological work in Peru since 1983 and is an adviser to the Peruvian government.

The Incas once ruled a vast swath of South America stretching from Colombia to Chile but Spain’s Francisco Pizarro and his band of 160 treasure hunters, using cannons and horses, brought that empire to a bloody end in 1533.

Some of the “mummy bundles” contained as many as seven people buried along with their possessions and weighed hundreds of pounds. The bundles have yielded amazing discoveries, said Cock, including well-preserved individuals, a copper mask, a war club, hand-painted textiles, and pottery.

The bodies were not embalmed, he said but were mummified by placing them in dry soil packed with textiles that helped them dry out more quickly.

“The process, although natural, was intentional,” he said.

So far, Cock said only three bundles had been unwrapped in what was a painfully slow, expensive process. It would take generations before the full implications of the find were known.

One of the unwrapped bundles, nicknamed the Cotton King, was made up of hundreds of pounds of raw cotton. Inside was the body of an Inca noble and a baby as well as 70 items including food, pottery, animal skins, and corn.

Among the most interesting discoveries was the number of elite members of Inca society, some of whom were still wearing the elaborate feather headdresses they were buried in. Another striking find was 22 intact and 18 disturbed “false heads,” or falsas Cabezas. These are mummy bundles usually reserved for the elite with a bump on top filled with cotton and resembling a human head, many of them with wigs.

These bundles contain several people, one of them the key person and the remainder probably accompanying him in the afterlife. The bodies of adults are in the traditional fetal position, with their possessions arranged around them.

“Prior to our excavations, only one falsas cabezas bundle from the Inca Period had been recovered by an archeologist, in 1956,” said Cock.

Cock said it was unclear whether all of the bodies in these bundles were related but probably when a key person died his body was put aside until the remainder of his party died and could be buried with him.

“Mummy bundles are like time capsules from the Inca,” said Johan Reinhard, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society. “The huge number of mummies from one period of time provides an unparalleled opportunity for new information about the
Incas.”

About 50,000 to 60,000 artifacts were retrieved from the site and 22 of these are on display at National Geographic, including ancient ceramic pots and patterned textiles. Cock and his team worked at a frenetic pace over the past three years to salvage as much as they could from the cemetery before the shantytown was leveled for development.

The site is known as Tupac Amaru by the 1,240 families who sought refuge there from 1989 after fleeing guerrilla fighting in the Peruvian highlands. Aside from the toll, the cemetery has taken from tens of thousands of gallons of liquid being dumped daily into the ground, other graves were destroyed by bulldozers in 1998.

Shantytown dwellers fought to remain on the site and archeologists turned the area into a giant dig, building bridges for people to cross the streets. Some of the residents joined in the dig. Some of the graves were found very close to the surface, especially in a dusty school playground which had been leveled several years ago.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

The 700,000-year-old Skull in Greek cave completely shatters the Out of Africa theory

The 700,000-year-old Skull in Greek cave completely shatters the Out of Africa theory

The “Petralona Man,” or “Petralona Archanthropus” is a for 700,000 years old human skull found in 1959. Since then, scientists have tried to locate the origin of this skull, which has created tremendous controversy.

The skull, indicating the oldest human “Europeoid” (presenting European traits), was embedded in a cave’s wall in Petralona, near Chalkidiki in Northern Greece.

A shepherd mistakenly found the cave, dense with stalactites and stalagmites. The cave and skull study was assigned to Dr. Aris Poulianos, an anthropologist specialist, member of UNESCO’s International Union of Anthropology and Ethnology, and president of the Anthropological Association of Greece.

Before that, Dr. Poulianos was already known for his thesis on “The origin of the Greeks”. His thesis was based on craniological and anthropometrical studies of Modern Greek populations, which proved that modern Greeks are related to ancient Greeks and that they are not the descendants of Slavic nations.

After the extensive study on the 700,000-year-old skull, he concluded that the “Petralona man” was not connected to the species that came out of Africa. His arguments were mainly based on the skull’s almost perfect orthography, the shape of its dental arch, and the occipital bone construction.

According to the “Out of Africa” theory, “anatomically modern humans” known as “Homo sapiens” originated in Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago before spreading to the rest of the world. This theory was related to the fact that most prehistoric fossils were found in Africa.

In 1964, two German researchers, anthropologist E. Breitinger and paleontologist O. Sickenberg, who was invited to Greece, suggested that the skull was actually 50,000 years old, thus rejecting Dr. Poulianos’ theory.

Moreover, Breitinger claimed that the skull belonged to the “first African out of Africa”. A few years later, in 1971, US Archaeology magazine confirmed Poulianos’ statement.

According to the scientific magazine, the existence of a cave dating back more than 700,000 years and human presence in almost every geological layer were ascertained.

Additionally, the magazine affirmed that human presence became evident from the discovery of Paleolithic tools of the same age and the most ancient traces of fire that was ever lit by human hand.

The research continued from 1975 to 1983, when the excavation stopped and findings remained inaccessible to study until 1997.

Today, 50 years after the discovery of the “Petralona man”, modern methods of absolute chronology confirm Dr. Poulianos’ theory.

Most academics believe that the skull belongs to an archaic hominid with strong European traits and characteristics of Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and sapiens, but they distinguish it from all these species.

This incredible discovery raises new questions on human evolution and certainly challenges the “Out of Africa” theory.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

3,200-year-old Egyptian built fortress found in Israel

3,200-year-old Egyptian built fortress found in Israel

A HUGE fortress dating back to the 12th-century BC has been unearthed in Israel and experts are linking it to a structure described in the Bible.

The Canaanite citadel is said to be similar to a building in the Book of Judges, a section of the Bible that describes intense warfare between groups of Canaanites, Israelites, and Philistines.

The design of the fortress and pottery found there indicate that it belonged to Canaanites who would have lived under Egyptian rule at the time.

The fortress was uncovered in Israel

Canaanites are often referred to as the ‘lost people’ of the Bible because a lot of what we know about them just comes from ancient texts describing interactions with civilization.

The 3,200-year-old fortress was found in southern Israel. It measures 60 feet by 60 feet and would have been two stories high. There is evidence to suggest it had watchtowers on each corner and a courtyard featuring stone slabs and columns.

About 3,200 years ago, the fortress was erected to defend against the Philistines.

The Israeli archaeologists working on the dig think the Canaanites built the structure with help from their Egyptian overlords.

Fortresses like this would have been necessary to try and stay protected from the invading Philistines.

The site contained hundreds of pottery vessels inside the rooms of the courtyard. This included one piece of pottery suspected to be used for religious reasons.

Earthenware discovered in a 3,200-year-old citadel unearthed near Guvrin Stream and Kibbutz Gal-On

IAA archaeologists Saar Ganor and Itamar Weissbein said: “The fortress we found provides a glimpse into the geopolitical reality described in the Book of Judges, in which the Canaanites, Israelites, and Philistines are fighting each other.

“In this period, the land of Canaan was ruled by the Egyptians and its inhabitants were under their custody.”

Pottery found at the site was similar to the Egyptian style at the time and even the fortress was similar to an Egyptian ‘governor’s houses’. The Egyptians are thought to have left the Canaan area in the middle of the 12th-century BC.

This means the fortress inhabitants would have been left to defend themselves as the area descended into territorial battles. The archaeological site will soon be opened to the public for free tours.